Daulton Gatto asked to interview me. I agreed on the condition that he first answer a question from my last post. In response to Daulton’s alleged critiques of my “stupid arguments which claim to show that Mike Gatto likes to cut up baby boys’ wieners with surgical instruments,” I asked: “Why do you state my claim as something unconnected to what I’ve written?” I got something resembling an answer.

“Tony” seems to have taken issue with a statement I made in a previous post, which spoke to his implied belief that Mike Gatto likes to cut up baby boys’ wieners with surgical instruments. While I will acknowledge that Tony never actually stated such a belief in so many words, it is my position that his distorted interpretation of California AB 768 provides ample justification to draw such a conclusion.

The link you provide to California AB 768 doesn’t contradict my interpretation of the bill, which you excerpted in your answer. The rest of your answer appears to recognize that I interpreted the bill correctly. Instead, you’re agitated about this:

… I stated that [Mike Gatto] believes male minors do not have the same rights to their bodies as every other citizen of California. … But he incorrectly believes he and every other parent has the valid authority to choose, and, in his capacity as a legislator, to protect that authority in law.

That is the gist. The authority to impose non-therapeutic genital surgery on a child is illegitimate.

To which I respond:

Of course parents have the authority to have their infant children circumcised. Do you really expect a newborn baby to make this decision for himself? Or do you think that every single male in the world should be forced to wait until they gain legal control over their own medical care to have their stinky, ugly foreskin snipped off? As the proud owner of a smooth, polished penis … I can unequivocally state that my own experience with circumcision has been overwhelmingly positive …

Your thinking on this is too narrow. It’s absurd to imagine¹ that parental authority is specific within genital cutting so that it only applies to the healthy prepuce of a son but not the healthy prepuce of a daughter. As I wrote before, if parents have the authority you say they possess, that applies to control over their daughters’ genitals, too. It would be about the parents, not the child. Yet California law already prohibits this for exactly the reasons I state that non-therapeutic male circumcision is not a legitimate parental choice. Non-therapeutic genital cutting is an individual rights issue for the child (i.e. the surgical patient), which trumps this supposed parental right to proxy consent for sons only. The right to bodily integrity is the core of self-ownership and includes the genitals, even for male minors.

I don’t expect a newborn baby to make this decision, or any decision. But the standard for proxy consent (i.e. parental authority) is not “babies can’t make decisions for themselves”. And you have a curious understanding of what “force” entails. I think that every single male should be able to choose, absent medical need before he is able to decide for himself. No male should be forced to live with a circumcision he does not need, probably won’t need, and may not want. I don’t think this requires that he wait until he’s an adult to choose, but it should never be forced on him without need or his consent.

I’m happy for you that your experience with your circumcision has been positive. You don’t have to share my preference for my body. I don’t have to share your preference for your body. That’s the uncomplicated thing about individual preferences. They’re all subjective to the individual. A presumption of shared circumcision preference between a child and his parents is too convenient for public policy. It assumes away the value of self-ownership to the individual himself.

Parents have the legal right to make decisions about the medical care of their children until their children come of age. Otherwise, emergency rooms around the country would be filled with blubbering infants going “ga ga goo goo ooga bahfah fum” when doctors ask them whether or not they want their booster shots. …

I haven’t said anything suggesting otherwise about a general approach to parenting and its interaction with the State. I didn’t write that parents do not have the authority to make medical decisions, period. You’re not claiming I did, but this isn’t a good buildup for where you’re going with it.

… This legal right necessarily extends to circumcision, …

Necessarily? We agree that parents may choose circumcision where there is medical need, although I’ll add that there is an ethical duty to exhaust less invasive solutions first. This legal right does not “necessarily” extend to non-therapeutic circumcision. All you’ve done here is argue “Parents make decisions, Circumcision is a decision, Parents may decide on circumcision.”

… and the only objections are coming from a small minority of extremist demagogues who erroneously believe that Mike Gatto’s protection of parental rights is tantamount to supporting genital mutilation. …

I recommend that you look up the definition of demagogue again, and perhaps reread our series of posts after doing so, before tossing it around like that.

Mike Gatto protected genital mutilation. I do not know if he supports genital mutilation. Again, if AB768 bill protects a valid parental right, then the California penal code violates parental rights. Mike Gatto is duty-bound to try to correct that if he and you are correct about a parental right to have a child’s healthy genitals cut to satisfy their own preferences.

… I see no reason to offer a more thorough explanation, as it is my firm belief that your argument critiques itself by its circular and misguided nature. It’s Sunday, I’m hung over, and I can’t be bothered to make an exhaustive list of the endless number of logical fallacies you’ve and your supporters have committed.

Don’t worry, you were thorough enough to show the gaps in your argument.

¹ I take it as a given that you oppose female genital cutting, as prohibited in California law. Please correct me if I’ve assumed too much on that point.

I’m still convinced he’s probably doing nothing more than a form of weird trolling, but I’m still fascinated by what Daulton Gatto is doing with this. Yesterday I got two posts, including my promised addition to the “enemies” list. It’s as ridiculous as I expected. Awesome.

Our blog’s loyal readers will be familiar with the antics of “Tony,” another incoherent babbling lunatic who lives in a bizarre fantasy world where Mike Gatto supports genital mutilation. Well, as you can see in the next two links, Tony insists on posting cowardly pingbacks to my brilliant and devastatingly well-reasoned critiques of his stupid arguments which claim to show that Mike Gatto likes to cut up baby boys’ wieners with surgical instruments.

Daulton:

My earlier points about ad hominem apply again, above and on the “enemies” list post. What I really enjoy, though, is that my “stupid arguments claim to show” something I have not written or implied. I do not believe “Mike Gatto likes to cut up baby boys’ wieners with surgical instruments.” Why do you state my claim as something unconnected to what I’ve written? Is it poor reading comprehension? Is it willful misrepresentation? Maybe it’s just lazy trolling? I’m curious and don’t want to assume an answer, but there is an explanation for why you’re punching a strawman. What is it?

With AB768, Mike Gatto introduced legislation stating that male circumcision in California can only be regulated at the state level. AB768 protects the practice of male circumcision and the exercise of parental authority to have a child circumcised for any reason throughout California. I stated that he believes male minors do not have the same rights to their bodies as every other citizen of California. I don’t even assume that he and his wife would have any sons circumcised. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t. But he incorrectly believes he and every other parent has the valid authority to choose, and, in his capacity as a legislator, to protect that authority in law.

The flaw is easy enough to understand. AB768 does not include critical information about the risks, harms, and ethics of non-therapeutic child circumcision. The practice of male circumcision involves individual human rights. If this parental authority to impose non-therapeutic genital cutting were legitimate, it would apply to their daughters, as well. California already prohibits this, correctly. AB768 permits the violation of human and constitutional rights of California citizens. Mike Gatto should not have introduced it. No one should’ve voted for it. Gov. Brown should not have signed it.

**********

True to his word, he added me to his enemies list. The last paragraph introduces an amusing assumption about what I believe based on what I wrote.

After my post yesterday morning, I can give credit where it’s due. Daulton Gatto responded with something resembling an argument. “Tony” Comes Back for More addresses an aspect of my original criticism of alleged sweet dude Mike Gatto and the unprincipled legislation he introduced.

To the fun, with all commentary directed to Daulton:

Yesterday, I published an insightful commentary on an anti-circumcision/Mike Gatto attack article written by some dumb douche named Tony. Today, I discovered that Tony posted a cowardly pingback rather than an actual comment on my critique, then did the digital equivalent of hiding behind his mommy by running back to his own stupid website to thump his chest amid the supportive grunting of his fellow anti-circumcision wackos.

I used a “cowardly” pingback for two reasons. One, I know how the Internet works. The pingback to your post alerted you that I responded. The cowardly move there would’ve been to disable my pingback so I could reply to your post without you knowing about it. Anyway, I’m not sure that “This post sucks and the guy who wrote it is a douche.” deserves much more credit than a mere pingback.

Two, in my experience people who engage in ad hominem and/or link to sketchy sources tend to delete unfavorable content. I don’t assume you would do this. I also don’t assume you would not. I don’t know you. This way, my side of the record stays.

It’s funny — no wait, it’s hilarious – to hear you throw around terms like “ad hominem” when it’s crystal clear that you lack even a basic understanding of sound logic and reasoning. …

Ad hominem: “You attacked your opponent’s character or personal traits in an attempt to undermine their argument.” Pussy. Giant douchebag. Stupid. Douche. Dumb douche. Foreskin crusaders and wackos dance pretty close, although the former probably just demonstrates how little you seem to understand about what I’m for and against. And my anonymity matters how to the validity of my position? You didn’t rebut any part of my original entry in your first post.

… Consider the following statement from your original post, which is without doubt the single dumbest one amid a burgeoning torrent of stupidity:

The part you excerpted was clunky. It isn’t embarrassing or shameful like AB768, but I should’ve been clearer. Still, the point expressed later in the original post was the key, based on that intentionally ludicrous analogy. Is the legal age of majority the valid line for when forced genital cutting is no longer acceptable on males? There is obviously a younger, informal age at which we think it’s unreasonable to impose circumcision on a healthy boy without his consent. The correct age is birth. We must recognize the mistake in treating this human right as if it’s a permission granted to boys by society at its discretion.

Every part of an individual’s body belongs to the individual from birth. Proxy consent requires a stricter standard than the subjective and speculative “wide array¹ of health and affiliative benefits.” There is no asterisk within self-ownership for “foreskin of male minor offspring”. Removing normal, healthy bits without a person’s consent – at any age – violates that person’s human rights, which California already recognized and protects for female minors. Mike Gatto legislated propaganda to strengthen protection for this human rights violation of male minors. That is not sweet behavior.

Another word out of you and you’re going on the enemies list. You’ve been warned.

… The conclusions of the AAP Technical Report and Policy Statement are far from those reached by physicians in most other Western countries. As mentioned, only 1 of the aforementioned arguments has some theoretical relevance in relation to infant male circumcision; namely, the questionable argument of UTI prevention in infant boys. The other claimed health benefits are also questionable, weak, and likely to have little public health relevance in a Western context, and they do not represent compelling reasons for surgery before boys are old enough to decide for themselves. …

This was published after Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB768 into law. Its logic was expressed numerous times in various forms long before Mike Gatto wrote his ignorance into his bill.

Remember back to the ballot initiative in San Francisco that sought to protect the same genital integrity rights for boys in San Francisco that are already protected for girls throughout America. In response to that, California Assemblyman Mike Gatto drafted a bill in 2011, AB768, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law that October. That’s when I wrote about Mike Gatto:

California Assemblyman Mike Gatto is an authoritarian. He believes that male children do not have human rights equal to the rights of their fellow citizens. Mike Gatto believes that freedom and liberty involve parental ownership of the genitals of their male children. He believes that the individual right involved in child genital cutting is exclusively the right to cut a male child without medical need. He believes that subjective, non-medical “affiliative benefits” are enough to justify surgery on a child, even if the child does not or might not want to be forcibly affiliated. California Assemblyman Mike Gatto prefers mindless, unquestioned deference to parental choices about non-therapeutic male child genital cutting.…

California already established that there is no arbitrary, unspecified age before which parents own the genitals of their female children. They may not allow someone to take a scalpel to the genitals of their daughters for non-therapeutic reasons, even if those reasons include a parental preference for forced “affiliative benefits.” The only factor involved in any decision to cut female minors is the presence or lack of medical need. That is the ethical, scientific view, which succinctly demonstrates that genital integrity exists within human rights. Mike Gatto believes that male children have only a mere subset of human rights, a subset that does not include genital integrity. It is a flaw in his character that Mike Gatto believes the full range of human rights only belong to male adults, female adults, and female children.

That is still accurate upon current reflection almost three years later. Look at the bill proposed and signed into law. It states that “[m]ale circumcision has a wide array of health and affiliative benefits.” Even if the first argument is assumed robust and true, discussion of the risks and costs of circumcision is nowhere to be found. Gatto, those who voted for it, and Gov. Brown all willingly enacted propaganda into law. Without a full consideration of what’s involved, including costs and the implications to human rights, they abdicated their responsibility to represent the interests and rights of every California citizen in favor of only those with power. That was, and remains, unethical.

Yesterday, I received a comment (#4 on the post) and pingback on that article from Daulton Gatto, who states that he is unrelated to Mike Gatto. The best writing is brief, so in that respect, Gatto’s comment succeeds. He uses the first twelve words of his comment to offer a brilliant insight into its author. Bravo.

The pingback is to his blog post, And Now, Another Episode of “Mike Gatto vs. the Bizarre Foreskin Crusaders”, which is in response to “Flawed Circumcision Defense: California Assemblyman Mike Gatto”. It’s a pretty good troll job, with plenty of ad hominem and not a word of rebuttal to my criticism of Mike Gatto’s flawed argument. It’s impressive. I suspect he’s having a laugh to amuse himself. Whatever. Taking it “seriously” will be interesting. The relevant part (graphic, immature, dudebro language, but you probably guessed that):

Which brings me to this piece of shit blog post, written by some crackpot wacko identified only as “Tony.” Tony is evidently a large pussy and a giant douchebag too frightened to admit full authorship of his own work and too stupid to employ anything resembling sound logic in his juvenile and laughable arguments. I will let his barely comprehensible babbling speak for itself while I cackle in laughter at the very suggestion that “Tony” is capable of recognizing a flawed argument in the first place.

In the meantime, I just want to once again explain on behalf of Mike Gatto and whatever cool dudes are still left in this douchebaggy world we live in just why it is that foreskin sucks and isn’t sweet at all.

Chicks much prefer dudes with circumcised dicks. Circumcised dicks get more pussy and they get to jizz on more chicks’ big tits. That’s a proven scientific fact. Mike Gatto, as a well-established sweet dude and charismatic stud, is clearly working harder to ensure the next generation of Californians get to fuck as many of the hot-ass chicks walking around this state as possible.

Now please tell me, “Tony,” just what the hell is wrong with that?

I’m not convinced by that long-winded version of “nuh-uh”. But it’s still sweet trolling ad hominem.

There is a question for me at the end. So, Daulton, just what the hell is wrong with that? You haven’t linked to anything suggesting this stunted fantasy is a scientific fact. Generalizations based on whatever gave you that limited worldview don’t eliminate the risks or direct harms from circumcision. They don’t discredit the human rights principle already in California law. You haven’t made any argument applicable to anyone other than yourself or someone who shares your particular preferences. That isn’t a valid basis for laws permitting the violation of the rights of others.

You did manage to link to a circumcision fetish website. It’s the same site with a history of endorsing¹ female genital cutting as a fetish. Good job.

If you have a coherent rebuttal, I’m willing to listen. If you only have more ad hominem, I’m always up for another good laugh. If your trolling was a limited, one-time engagement, thanks!

¹ The Internet is forever, no matter how vigorously Circlist’s operator(s) tried to hide the past with the content you see today. I’ll guess that research is a mysterious stranger to you. Convince me I shouldn’t guess that.

Many have heaped scorn on Mary Elizabeth Williams’ Salonpiece that criticized Alan Cumming for calling male circumcision genital mutilation and comparing it to female genital mutilation. This scorn is deserved.

Alan Cumming wants to tell you about his penis. He wants it to be a shining example to the world. In a candid interview with Drew Grant this week in the New York Observer, the 49-year-old Scottish actor reveals his strong opinions on “Girls,” naughty cellphone pictures, and, most controversially, circumcision. Or as he puts it, “genital mutilation.”

“There’s a double-standard, which is that we condemn the people who cut off girls’ clitorises, but when it happens to boys,” Cumming says. “I mean, it is the most sensitive part of their bodies, it has loads of nerve endings, and it can go horribly wrong. I’m speaking out against it … I’m just so suspicious of the medical industry, which just flings pills at people to ensure everyone is reliant on things. ‘Here are some pills, Mommy. Take them, and we’ll take your baby away and hack its thing off, and then we’ll bill you for that too.’”

I don’t share Mr. Cumming’s view of the medical industry. Its complicity strikes me as cultural inertia and cowardice. My experience suggests that profit-driven focus on circumcision is limited, although it motivates some. But that’s a distraction. The key is that he is correct about the comparison.

Circumcision of a healthy male minor is mutilation of that male’s genitals. To be valid, it must involve his consent prior to the surgery, not assumed to be later granted retroactively. This is the standard inherent in 18 USCS § 116, which criminalizes all non-therapeutic genital cutting on female minors without regard for parental justifications or potential benefits. The difference we imagine is an accident in the history of Western child genitalcutting.

There is good reason to find the work of the Gates Foundation repugnant, as it pertains to male circumcision. It speaks in the euphemism of voluntary medical male circumcision, when it also means infant circumcision. This is unethical because it violates the principles of bodily integrity and consent. And this study, commissioned and funded by the Gates Foundation, hardly provides reassurance when examining the context of WHO and UNAIDS, who think violating this human right of male children can be legitimized through question begging. Mental gymnastics like that are not admirable.

Although it’s easy to find similar defenses of male circumcision, ritual or not, this implies that the critical issue is intent rather than outcome. Female genital mutilation, in all its forms, is wrong because the female is mutilated, not because she is mutilated for “bad” reasons. Some reasons given are the same as those for male circumcision. And not all females who were mutilated reject or condemn it. Yet all reasons for surgically altering the healthy genitals of a female minor are still bad. This focuses on the principles and facts involved, not our feelings.

Notice, too, how often erroneous claims like “[t]here is no evidence whatsoever to support the notion that it affects function, sensation or satisfaction” are made about male circumcision, as it’s made with that quote from Williams’ link to reader comments on an article. The statement is wrong on its face because circumcision changes the function. If you change the form, you change the function. The function of the penis, including its structure, should not be lazily defined as “to have sex” or something similarly ridiculous. The foreskin is normal anatomy with functions for the penis and belongs to its owner.

The quote is disputable on sensation, considering the (anecdotal) arguments in favor of male circumcision stating that males can “last longer“. Consider the heads I win/tails you lose efforts of Brian Morris here, as all outcomes are assumed to be favorable to overall satisfaction, even when the studies cited do not involve anything near 100% on the subjective evaluation of satisfaction.

nor does a clean male circumcision compare with the often crude, blunt and unsanitary practice of female genital mutilation.

Those qualifiers obfuscate. What about clean female genital cutting compared with crude, blunt, and unsanitary male circumcision? A sterile surgical environment does not grant legitimacy to a rights violation. Again, the act is what matters. There are degrees of harm possible, but the inevitability of harm requires first priority, whatever the degree.

WHO also explains that female genital mutilation “comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.” There is no unethical caveat for “but if we find some benefits to female health, or even male health, we’d have to weigh mutilating injury against potential benefits.” That unethical caveat is always applied to male genital mutilation, as Williams does here. An adult male volunteering is not the same as an infant male being volunteered. Consent is the issue, not how horrible female genital mutilation usually is or how innocuous and/or beneficial male circumcision appears to be. Non-therapeutic genital cutting on a healthy individual who does not consent is unethical. It involves harm. Gender is irrelevant to the principle.

One can argue, quite persuasively, about whether the practice of circumcision still has validity here in the West, especially among those who don’t have a religious directive. What’s needed, however, is education and enlightenment, so families can make the healthiest choices for their children. …

I reject the premise. This is a not a decision parents should be allowed to make for their children. The argument that parents may decide this for their healthy children requires this decision to be a parental right. If it’s a parental right, then the prohibition of non-therapeutic genital cutting on daughters is indefensible. The basis for thinking about genital cutting can’t be girls and the parents of boys. That’s absurd.

… It’s not helpful to make far-fetched comparisons, and it certainly isn’t constructive to imply that men and boys who are circumcised are somehow damaged, “mutilated” goods. That’s a shaming technique that serves no one, one that turns having a foreskin into a bragging point. …

Why are we only worried about shaming men and boys by using the term “mutilation”? Isn’t there the possibility or likelihood that women and girls will feel shamed if we describe their genitals as mutilated? Are the psyches of females more able to handle facts?

There is a difference in stating a fact and demanding a value judgment from that fact. The bodies of males who were circumcised as children were mutilated. Their rights were violated. Circumcised males are not obligated to think this is bad or shameful. The obligation (for everyone) rests in understanding that it is unacceptable to perpetuate this violation on their children or to permit its continued practice in society.

Or to put it in terms of individual autonomy, circumcision mutilated me through the deprivation of an essential¹ part of my body. Where I had a normal human foreskin, I now have only scars. My penis is mutilated. No one gets to reject that fact for me. But I do not feel shame. This sense that males might feel shame is what encourages parents to circumcise their sons for conformity. We have to stop being afraid of shame. We’ll achieve that only when we are no longer afraid to state that shame belongs with those who circumcise, not those who are circumcised.

… And it’s an unfair judgment coming from a man who admits, “I myself don’t have kids. I just have managers, assistants, agents and publicists.”

I feel second-hand embarrassment, so that at least someone feels what her statement deserves.

¹ Quibble with essential as something other than an obvious stand-in for normal, and I’ll roll my eyes and ask if normal parts of female genitalia are essential.

It won’t come as a surprise to read that I don’t think much of Yair Rosenberg’s lazy approach to analyzing non-therapeutic infant male circumcision. Add another example. This time he’s misreporting the findings of another meta-analysis by Brian Morris. Mr. Rosenberg quotes from a Daily Mail article that amounts to little more than a press release.

But first his introduction:

Across Europe, pushes to ban circumcision have rested on its supposedly deleterious effects on a child’s body, and lack of demonstrable benefits. Anne Lindboe, Sweden’s child welfare adviser, has gone so far as to label the practice “violence against children,” claiming that parents who perform it do so out of “ignorance.” She and her counterparts in Denmark and Finland have classified child circumcision as a “human rights violation” and called for it to be criminalized. A German court similarly banned the procedure on the grounds that it caused “bodily harm.” The only problem with these stances? They completely contradict everything science has found about circumcision’s impact on children’s health.

Findings of potential benefits from voluntary, adult male circumcision do not contradict the ethical, rights-based position against non-therapeutic infant male circumcision. Proxy consent is not the same as the consent given by adult volunteers to this permanent, irreversible surgery. Circumcising healthy minors violates their rights to bodily autonomy and integrity, just as any other permanent, non-therapeutic intervention is a violation. It’s the same principle that applies to even the tiniest, less-invasive-than-male-circumcision cut on a female minor’s genitals, which we’ve rightly criminalized. Potential benefits and human rights violation are not mutually exclusive. The presence of potential benefits does not eliminate the fatal ethical flaw. Nor does deciding that circumcision diminishing sexual function, sensitivity, or satisfaction is a “myth”, as Mr. Rosenberg claims of the new meta-analysis by Prof. Morris and Dr. John Krieger.

With that misguided frame, Mr. Rosenberg presents the study:

“The highest-quality studies suggest that medical male circumcision has no adverse effect on sexual function, sensitivity, sexual sensation, or satisfaction,” Professor Brian Morris told The Daily Mail. Morris and his co-author looked at 36 studies covering 40,473 men, half circumcised and half not. They ranked each in terms of scientific rigor and quality, according to accepted official guidelines. And they found that circumcision “had no overall adverse effect on penile sensitivity, sexual arousal, sexual sensation, erectile function, premature ejaculation, duration of intercourse, orgasm difficulties, sexual satisfaction, pleasure, or pain during penetration.” Indeed, after 24 months, 99.9 percent of men were satisfied with their circumcisions–and 72 percent said sensitivity had increased.

There’s a lot to unpack there. The largest point is that Mr. Rosenberg clearly didn’t read the 12 page paper because he regurgitates the results in the digestible (i.e. misleading) package given in the news article. Reading it might reduce his confirmation bias. There are enough obvious limitations, as well:

While the review considered a large body of evidence, there are some factors that may be influencing the findings.

For example, many studies were surveys, and the recruitment process for them is not described. It could be the case that men who have a satisfying sex life may be more willing to participate and answer questions on sexual performance and satisfaction that those who aren’t.

Also, most of the responses in the study are subjective, and what one person considers to be a sexual problem or sexual satisfaction, another might not. There may also be differences in the culture and ethnicity of the participants of certain studies, meaning that their findings cannot be so easily transferred elsewhere.

Beyond that, focus on the conclusion from the study. They state that their analysis suggests this conclusion. Suggests is not a synonym for proves. Yet, even though the Daily Mail article doesn’t use the word in quoting Morris, Mr. Rosenberg states:

Morris told The Daily Mail that he saw his study disproving circumcision’s adverse effects as complementary to those showing its benefits. …

He repeatedly misses the critical issue of consent versus force. In a previous article Mr. Rosenberg summarized a finding that “[i]t would have been unethical to continue without offering circumcision” to the remaining intact volunteers in a study with a simple statement that it would be “[u]nethical not to circumcise the men.” It appears that Mr. Rosenberg is not a reliable filter for news pertaining to circumcision.

There are obvious problems in the current meta-analysis. I will accept their methodology and reasoning as presented, which lead to their “suggests” conclusion. Assuming it is accurate, so what? The findings were not 100%. Of course, 99.9% is presented as essentially the same thing, which is even better than the result we’d expect from a dictator’s latest popular election. From the Krieger et al. Adult Male Circumcision study in Kenya [15]¹, 8.9% of circumcised men identified their penile sexual sensation as something other than “increased” or “the same” 24 months after circumcision. It’s ridiculous to pretend that these men don’t matter and that their experience should be ignored to allow a perceived universal defense for circumcising male minors.

Mr. Rosenberg concludes:

Yet the findings of science have done little thus far to deter Europeans politicians and health officials from seeking to criminalize circumcision, and labeling those who practice it “ignorant” and “barbaric.” It remains to be seen if this study will alter their course.

A utilitarian defense for violating human rights is ineffectual because the defense relies on using only a preferred subset of factors to reach a conclusion. “It’s mine” is a sufficient reason for a male to want his foreskin. He owns his foreskin as much as he owns any other part of his anatomy. Potential benefits valued by his parents are irrelevant while his body is healthy. Proxy consent for this non-therapeutic intervention is invalid because the net benefit or harm is subjective to the individual himself.

This is obvious if considering the question Morris and Krieger asked. Does male circumcision affect sexual function, sensitivity or satisfaction? In order, yes, maybe, and maybe. The findings suggest as much if we look at the participants in the included studies as individuals with their own unique tastes and preferences rather than as statistics. The paper’s focus is sex as a measurable number, which is an idiotic way to reach a conclusion about a subjective topic like human sexuality.

For sexual function, the foreskin is removed. That changes function. Maybe that’s “good”, maybe it’s “bad”. Each person must decide before circumcision what he thinks he wants. What his parents prefer is meaningless.

As for sensitivity, the results are equivocal. I’m willing to accept the negative findings as lower-quality studies for this purpose. But in a study Morris and Krieger rate as 2++, Payne et al [12], this:

… It is possible that the uncircumcised penis is more sensitive due to the presence of additional sensory receptors on the prepuce and frenulum, but this cannot be compared with the absence of such structures in the circumcised penis. …

Yet, for Morris and Krieger, this is support for their “suggests” conclusion because:

… More circumcised participants reported an increase in their level of sexual arousal, while more uncircumcised men reported being unaffected by the erotic stimulus. …

They want to believe, so they believe. That’s the only way I can reconcile the source study with their analysis.

In certain aspects sensitivity is quantifiable, but there is a an element of experience to human sexuality that a generalized “yes” or “no” here dismisses. That same element of experience, but without the ability to quantify in a utilitarian summary, exists in personal evaluations of satisfaction. This is why I don’t state that someone is wrong for preferring circumcision or believing it improves their experience of sex or life, in general. But that is also why it’s wrong for Morris, Krieger, Rosenberg, or anyone else to support parental choice (i.e. proxy consent) for non-therapeutic circumcision. Declaring one’s own preference as a truth applicable to someone else – without concern for the individual’s preference for himself – is the critical mistake inseparable from their argument.

One final point: It’s important to read the abstract and the study rather than just the abstract, even as a layman. Doing so reveals a lot of nuance, as the AAP’s revisedpositionstatement in 2012 so embarrassinglyshowed. It avoids the “It’s official!” conclusion too many (like Mr. Rosenberg here) want to staple to the evolving science involved in circumcision. The Payne [12] study is another example of the importance of this maxim, as are the remaining studies reviewed by Morris and Krieger, probably.

¹ Bracketed numbers correspond to the same-numbered footnote in the Morris/Krieger review.

At The Good Men Project Renee Lute makes a request: Please Respect Our Circum-Decision. It only requires a short response: No. Still, her essay is worth analyzing to explain why the only answer is “no”.

Circumcision on a healthy child is a permanent body alteration without the child’s consent. I’m under no obligation to respect that. I do not believe anyone should respect that. If Lute understood circumcision as well as she claims, she’d understand how absurd it is to request respect for her decision from someone who recognizes this surgical intervention as the human rights violation it is.

She is, of course, due a respectful rejection of her request. I will not engage in ad hominem, nor will I call her names as a result of what she intends to do. Anyway, facts and logic are enough to demonstrate her errors.

She begins:

… I’m apologizing to [my unborn son] for writing this piece, because now the world will know just a little bit about the future state of his penis, and most little boys don’t have to deal with that. …

This common theme is strange. Intact genitals are the human default. Unnecessary intervention is the only reason the status of a child’s genitals is considered an issue if people know, as if knowing is a Big Deal. Or, rather, unnecessary intervention is the only reason the status of a boy’s genitals is considered an issue if people know. This bizarre reality is the result of intervening, not some inherent shame in having others know we have human genitals.

That gets to the reason why I won’t respect her and her husband’s decision for their unborn son. A daughter’s normal, healthy genitals are off-limits for surgical intervention, and rightly so. Those who recognize the ethics involved as gender-neutral must stand against the opinion that a son’s normal, healthy genitals can be subjected to surgical intervention. (There will be more on the valid comparison below.)

She discusses Mark Joseph Stern’s terrible Slate piece (my post) and Brian Earp’s reply at The Good Men Project. She writes:

Neither of these articles really threw me. I know the arguments against circumcision, and I know the arguments for circumcision. What did surprise me, however, was what I found in the comments section under The Good Men Project article. …

Never read the comments. We know that doesn’t mean “never read the comments”. But it’s a reminder that the Internet is a place for bad manners and emotional responses. That’s particularly true in comment sections. Discussion of circumcision is no different. I’m not excusing the behavior. The rude, hateful, and misogynistic garbage is wrong and needs to stop. But reasoned proponents of bodily integrity, as I aim to be, have our argument harmed only in the sense that someone is willing to generalize about those who disagree based on the miscreants that any group has.

… I am not a circumcision enthusiast. In fact, I could not care less whether other people circumcise their sons or not. Do it if you want! Don’t if you don’t want! But I am begging you—begging you—to not make families who choose to circumcise their sons feel like they are abusers of children, or human rights violators.

“Do it if you want! Don’t if you don’t want!” is the false argument. What does the child who will live with the circumcision want? That is the core. Without knowing what he will want, imposing it as a non-therapeutic intervention is a human rights violation. I suppose it’s unfortunate if that makes someone feel bad about circumcising their healthy son(s). But I recognize that my parents violated my rights when they circumcised me. I won’t pretend¹ that someone else circumcising their son isn’t violating his rights because stating a truth makes them feel bad about the choice they make. (I do not take a position on how individual males should feel about being circumcised.)

Why am I going to have my son circumcised? Because his father and I have done our reading. We’ve talked about it, and we’ve made our decision. There are legitimate reasons. Circumcision eliminates the risk of phimosis (in which a foreskin is tight and cannot be fully pulled back, which makes cleaning and passing urine difficult, and increases the risk of penile cancer). This affects 1 in 10 older boys and men. Circumcision reduces the risk of inflammation and infection of the head of the penis and the foreskin, and greatly reduces the risk of urinary tract infections in infants. Uncircumcised men have a 15-60% increased risk of prostate cancer (which affects 1 in 6 men). [1] We are not uneducated about circumcision. …

That last line is not necessarily true, given what comes before it in that paragraph. The sole source cited for this knowledge is a pamphlet by Brian Morris, which contains no sourcing of its own. (Some of the material in this excerpt is verbatim from Morris, without quotes to indicate as much.) It contains information that is biased and exaggerated.

To the claim that circumcision eliminates the risk of phimosis, this is incorrect. Contrary to the risk of phimosis being a “legitimate reason” to circumcise a healthy child, the ethical standard is that the risk of complications is a legitimate reason to refrain from intervening on a healthy child. Remember, too, that Brian Morris is the cited source for the 1 in 10 claim. He’s stated that all boys are born with phimosis, which is false. Even if the statistic is true, it is that phimosis will affect 1 in 10, not that it will require circumcision in 1 in 10. This mirrors his claim in the pamphlet that “the foreskin leads to 1 in 3 uncircumcised boys developing a condition requiring medical attention.” A condition requiring medical attention is not a synonym for circumcision. This is a rhetorical sleight of hand. The true incidence of medical need for circumcision within an intact male’s life is approximately 1%, which includes for phimosis.

As for the “15-60% increased risk of prostate cancer” statistic, that is a correlation, not a proven fact. “Circumcision before first sexual intercourse is associated with a reduction in the relative risk of PCa in this study population.” To quote the author, “‘These data suggest a biologically plausible mechanism through which circumcision may decrease the risk of prostate cancer,’ said study researcher Dr. Jonathan Wright, an assistant professor of urology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He noted that the study was observational; it did not show a cause-and-effect link.”

She continues:

… One of the aforementioned commenters wrote that anyone who would have their child circumcised should have to experience it themselves, first. Well, my husband has experienced it (and remarkably, he gave me his permission to tell the world just now), …

I don’t like that pointless suggestion because it invites that pointless rebuttal.

…and while I have not gone through the completely incomparable horror of female circumcision (I am not going to detail why it’s incomparable here, but I do encourage you to research the differences if you don’t know what they are. You’ll find some information here), …

I know what the differences are. I know what the similarities are. The difference is in degree, not in kind. That difference in degree can be great, of course, but non-therapeutic genital-cutting on an individual without the individual’s consent is not a gendered principle. The WHO defines female genital mutilation as “all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.” The perceived difference², including in the link Lute provides, rests on what constitutes a medical versus non-medical reason. If we assume the “no known health benefits” argument against FGM turned into “known health benefits”, would people change their mind and decide it’s no longer mutilation? Some might say “yes”. They’d be wrong. I suspect most people would not change their conclusion. As the WHO states, FGM “also violates a person’s rights to health, security and physical integrity, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the right to life when the procedure results in death.” That would still hold true if their were potential benefits. It holds true for male circumcision, as well.

… My husband and I aren’t unfamiliar with pain, and we are willing to put our child through a moment of discomfort for the benefits this procedure provides. Kind of like we’re willing to put our child through a moment of discomfort for the benefits that vaccinations provide.

But is their child son willing to have the moment (i.e. 1+ week) of discomfort and a lifetime without his foreskin for the potential benefits this procedure provides? (Remember from above that the Lutes do not appear to understand the benefits.)

Circumcision is not like a vaccination. Vaccinations work with the body’s immune system to trigger disease resistance. Circumcision merely removes a part of the body because it might cause a problem later. The comparison needs critical thinking beyond “prevents disease”, lest we further open parental decision-making to other ridiculous interventions.

This piece is both explanatory and pleading. I am pleading with you. Don’t make these perfectly well intentioned families—like us—feel like monsters because you’ve decided to go a different way with your own sons. We’re doing something different, and that’s okay. We each have our reasons. I don’t care whether you breastfeed or formula feed. I don’t care whether you co-sleep or have your babies in their own cribs, and I don’t care whether you’ve named your child something completely traditional (like Kate) or whether she’ll be answering to Zenith for the rest of her life. I’m asking for the same courtesy.

It’s okay to do something different. It is not okay to do this something different. You can’t respect one right of your son less than the same right of his sister and brush it aside as “parenting”. If someone asks me to respectfully tell them they’re wrong, I agree with that request for decency. But I will not respect what is obviously indefensible and deeply offensive to basic human rights.

² The other mistake is in thinking that FGM is designed to control sexuality, but that male circumcision isn’t and doesn’t. It controls male sexuality because it forces a specific form on the child for his genitals. (e.g. It’s more aesthetically appealing to women.)

There is also a history, up to the present, in circumcision reducing sexuality. Read Moses Maimonides or this.

One paragraph in, and there’s so much to unpack. First, the obvious point is that Mr. Stern is another in a long line of lazy writers who thinks that the ability to type a word into Google proves much of anything for a story. If it’s just “a quick Google search away”, in a paragraph filled with links, it’s reasonable to expect an author to include the search he used to get to the evidence of alleged malfeasance. When I use Google to search circumcision, I get Wikiepdia, news articles, KidsHealth.org, the Mayo Clinic, the government’s Medline Plus, Intact America, Jewish Virtual Library, NOCIRC, and so on. I’ll point out that only the results for Intact America and NOCIRC are to something decidedly against non-therapeutic child circumcision, but so what? It’s a search algorithm. That’s easily gamed. It doesn’t prove Mr. Stern’s silly angle.

As for the vitriol, this is the internet. Never read the comments. That doesn’t excuse the comments. They’re often offensive and uninformed and the people who engage in that behavior are wrong, even if they’re ostensibly on my side. But you’ll find them on both sides. It doesn’t prove anything on the argument. Using it as evidence against the argument is ad hominem.

So. There are facts about circumcision. Circumcision is the “surgical removal of the foreskin of males”. The foreskin is the “loose fold of skin that covers the glans of the penis”. Those are facts. But he’s implying the context of non-therapeutic male child circumcision. What should parents want?

Parents shouldn’t want anything, of course, because this is not their decision. Just like we don’t allow them to cut off any other normal body parts of their children, they do not possess a right to circumcise their sons for any reason other than immediate medical need that can’t be adequately resolved with less-invasive methods. Proxy consent is not sufficient for non-theratpeutic circumcision. But because our society doesn’t yet grasp the full implication of an equal right to bodily integrity, parents want information. Fortunately, there is scientific evidence against non-therapeutic circumcision!

The normal, healthy foreskin is normal and healthy. If parents leave it alone, as they should, statistics demonstrate that their son(s) will almost never need any intervention for his foreskin, and much less a medically-necessary circumcision.

Of every 1,000 boys who are circumcised:

20 to 30 will have a surgical complication, such as too much bleeding or infection in the area.

2 to 3 will have a more serious complication that needs more treatment. Examples include having too much skin removed or more serious bleeding.

2 will be admitted to hospital for a urinary tract infection (UTI) before they are one year old.

About 10 babies may need to have the circumcision done again because of a poor result.

In rare cases, pain relief methods and medicines can cause side effects and complications. You should talk to your baby’s doctor about the possible risks.

Of every 1,000 boys who *are not* circumcised:

7 will be admitted to hospital for a UTI before they are one year old.

10 will have a circumcision later in life for medical reasons, such as a condition called phimosis. Phimosis is when the opening of the foreskin is scarred and narrow because of infections in the area that keep coming back. Older children who are circumcised may need a general anesthetic, and may have more complications than newborns.

Those numbers, from the Canadian Pediatric Society, are hardly compelling in favor of circumcising healthy children. Non-therapeutic circumcision prevents 5 boys (0.5%) from being admitted to a hospital with a UTI in the first year of life. Yet, between 20 and 30 (2-3%) boys will suffer a surgical complication, and another 2 to 3 (0.2-0.3%) will suffer a more serious complication.

The really curious statistic is the last in each group. About 10 (~1%) babies may need to have the circumcision done again due to a poor result. If normal, healthy boys are left with their normal, healthy foreskin, 10 (1%) of them will need a medically-necessary circumcision later in life. Those numbers look curiously similar.

So, to recap the facts in this context, circumcision is the permanent removal of a normal, healthy foreskin from a boy who can’t offer his consent to eliminate the 1% lifetime risk that he’ll need a circumcision.

There are other potential benefits, which Mr. Stern links in great detail. I have no problem including them, regardless of how weak or stupid I think they may be. That still isn’t enough to permit non-therapeutic child circumcision. The inputs into the decision are facts, but their value is not. Each person is an individual with his own preferences that his parents can’t know. What Mr. Stern values is not automatically what I value. Or to make the more appropriate connection, what parents value is not automatically what their son will value. That is why proxy consent requires a stricter standard than consent. A surgical decision that permanently alters a healthy child’s body can’t be permitted within proxy consent.

Mr. Stern writes this curious statement among many curious statements:

… Yet in the past two decades, a fringe group of self-proclaimed “intactivists” has hijacked the conversation, dismissing science, slamming reason, and tossing splenetic accusations at anyone who dares question their conspiracy theory. …

What a specific subset of people do is hardly the entirety of the argument or proof in favor of his position. Again, this is just silly, indefensible ad hominem. But what he says is also untrue. Dismissing science? Not here. I’ll accept any claimed benefit. The argument against forcing circumcision on a child is still as powerfully conclusive. Slamming reason? Stating that normal, healthy children should not undergo surgery is the position using reason. Conspiracy theory? Nope. Parents who circumcise, and people who support that option, are generally well-intentioned. I can showexampleswherethatisn’ttrue, but I’m aware that such evidence is isolated. It’s surely true that some doctors circumcise for the money. I assume most circumcise because they believe it’s acceptable or believe parents should choose, even if the doctor wouldn’t. It’s important to understand how we got here, but I don’t much care about placing blame for that. I care about moving forward. There are any number of like-minded individuals Mr. Stern could find and talk to rather than write the wrong things he wrote.

… For doctors, circumcision remains a complex, delicate issue; for researchers, it’s an effective tool in the fight for global public health. But to intactivists, none of that matters. …

All of that matters. No one I know believes that adult (or older teen) males shouldn’t be able to volunteer for non-therapeutic circumcision.

Mr. Stern’s tactic here is what he’s complaining about. It’s similar to when Dr. Amy Tuteur goes on a tedious rant about “foreskin fetishists”. Smear your opponents because they smear you. “They”, of course. Internet comments are a part of humanity, not representative of it.

I’ve written circumcision a whole bunch above. But circumcision is genital cutting, because facts. The comparison is in the principle of those facts. Non-therapeutic genital cutting on a non-consenting individual is unethical. It’s also genital mutilation if we are to accept the WHO definition of female genital mutilation:

Female genital mutilation (FGM) comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.…

… It is nearly always carried out on minors and is a violation of the rights of children. The practice also violates a person’s rights to health, security and physical integrity, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the right to life when the procedure results in death.

The issue is human rights, not a specific subset of human rights from which male minors are somehow exempt.

Anti-circumcision activists then deploy a two-pronged attack on some of humanity’s most persistent weaknesses: sexual insecurity and resentment of one’s parents. Your parents, you are told by the intactivists, mutilated you when you were a defenseless child, violating your human rights and your bodily integrity. Without your consent, they destroyed the most vital component of your penis, seriously reducing your sexual pleasure and permanently hobbling you with a maimed member. Anti-circumcision activists craft an almost cultic devotion to the mythical powers of the foreskin, claiming it is responsible for the majority of pleasure derived from any sexual encounter. Your foreskin, intactivists suggest, could have provided you with a life of satisfaction and joy. Without it, you are consigned to a pleasureless, colorless, possibly sexless existence.

Some take that approach. I only speak for myself on being unhappy with circumcision. I’ll quote myself on his generalization:

… The problem is not that circumcision is bad, per se. Healthy men who choose to have themselves circumcised are correct for their bodies. Men circumcised as infants who are happy (or indifferent) about being circumcised are also correct for their bodies. …

But if you only dive into comments sections, it’s easy to believe that’s the only opinion. It’s not excusable to believe that, but it’s easy.

Intactivists gain validity and a measure of mainstream acceptance through their sheer tenacity. Their most successful strategy is pure ubiquity, causing a casual observer to assume their strange fixations are widely accepted. Just check the comment section of any article pertaining to circumcision. …

My “key rallying cry” is that circumcision is medically unnecessary and violates the child’s basic rights to bodily integrity and autonomy. That holds up even if the rest of his paragraph’s citations hold up. Sexual satisfaction is a subjective evaluation to each individual. The ability to orgasm is not the full universe of sexual satisfaction. And any change to form changes function. The individual may view that change as good. He may view it as bad. Parents can’t know. That’s the ethical flaw in circumcising healthy minors.

Surely Mr. Stern read through the studies to understand exactly what they say. I have my doubts. I read it. That study is problematic when viewed as conclusively as Mr. Stern cites it. It requires nuance the study’s author provided. Does an appeal to authority sweep away any concerns about limitations?

“Adult male circumcision does not adversely affect…” Is that proof that circumcision of male minors doesn’t affect sexual satisfaction, with the glaring caveat against surgery that such a male can’t know?

It’s also worth noting that Mr. Stern linked that same study again later in the paragraph. He also linked another study in consecutive sentences. And a third. That’s deceptive and improperly gives an impression about “an entire field of resarch”, no?

… ([No adverse effect] fits with what my colleague Emily Bazelon found when she asked readers for their circumcision stories a few years ago.) …

So much for circumcision’s supposedly crippling effect on sexual pleasure. But what about its effect on health? Intactivists like to call circumcision “medically unnecessary.” In reality, however, circumcision is an extremely effective preventive measure against global disease. …

… Circumcision lowers the risk of HIV acquisition in heterosexual men by about 60 to 70 percent. … [ed. note: (Later in this paragraph, he uses the WHO link again.]

The “60” link states “male circumcision should be considered an efficacious intervention for HIV prevention in countries and regions with heterosexual epidemics, high HIV and low male circumcision prevalence.” Not one of those three criteria matches a Western nation. Those studies also involved adult volunteers, not unconsenting minors.

As both a personal and public health matter, circumcision is clearly in men’s best interest. …

Ethically, as a personal health matter, each healthy individual should decide for himself what body alterations are in his best interest based on his own preferences.

… Anyway, to intactivists, mutilation is mutilation; what does it matter if it’s for the greater good?

“The greater good” doesn’t matter because individuals are humans with rights, not statistics to be treated without regard for what they need or want. Life is full of risks. Because we seemingly can mitigate that does not mean we may or should.

The most important criteria for the justification of medical procedures are necessity, cost-effectiveness, subsidiarity, proportionality, and consent. For preventive medical procedures, this means that the procedure must effectively lead to the prevention of a serious medical problem, that there is no less intrusive means of reaching the same goal, and that the risks of the procedure are proportional to the intended benefit. In addition, when performed in childhood, it needs to be clearly demonstrated that it is essential to perform the procedure before an age at which the individual can make a decision about the procedure for him or herself.

They raise many issues surrounding the AAP’s focus on UTIs, penile cancer, STDs, and HIV. They conclude that non-therapeutic circumcision “fails to meet the commonly accepted criteria for the justification of preventive medical procedures in children.” Even ignoring their critique of the applicability of the scientific studies involved in the AAP’s revised policy statement, they are convincing. Their ethical argument is powerful.

The response by the AAP’s Task Force on Circumcision is intriguing and bizarre. It’s intriguing because it raises potential issues with what Frisch et al wrote about the science. This section is worth discussing, but not by me. I see the points on both sides. It’s difficult for either to squeeze every helpful detail into a few pages. For this, I’ll leave it with my usual statement. I am willing to accept the claimed benefits, however faulty they may be. The ironclad ethical case against non-therapeutic child circumcision is no weaker if all of the AAP’s criticisms have full merit.

Its response is bizarre for the ethical issues the Task Force continues to dismiss and ignore.

First, responding to the claim that the Task Force suffered from cultural bias:

… Although that heterogeneity may lead to a more tolerant view toward circumcision in the United States than in Europe, the cultural “bias” in the United States is much more likely to be a neutral one than that found in Europe, where there is a clear bias against circumcision. …

That (claimed) neutrality is the problem in the AAP’s revised policy statement on male circumcision. They imagine that there is no right answer to this ethical question. Here, the physical integrity of a healthy child is surgically violated without his consent. The law recognizes a single correct answer for female minors on the same ethical question. The implicit conclusion that male minors possess a lesser right to their physical integrity than their sisters is indefensible. It doesn’t matter that potential benefits exist from circumcision. Frisch et al demonstrate this in analyzing the difference between consent and proxy consent for a non-therapeutic intervention.

The AAP continues its challenge:

… Yet, the commentary’s authors have, at no point, recognized that their own cultural bias may exist in equal, if not greater, measure than any cultural bias that might exist among the members of the AAP Task Force on Circumcision. If cultural bias influences the review of available evidence, then a culture that is comfortable with both the circumcised penis and the uncircumcised penis would seem predisposed to a more dispassionate analysis of the scientific literature than a culture with a bias that is either strongly opposed to circumcision or strongly in favor of it.

To the point, Frisch et al show that the cultural acceptability of circumcision is not a valid defense because there is a right answer to the ethical question involving this prophylactic surgical intervention on healthy children. The AAP missed the essential issue in its recommendation. The ongoing American experiment with circumcision is a reasonably-inferred explanation. Frisch et al emphasize the child in non-therapeutic child circumcision. The AAP continues to emphasize only circumcision, with the children being a distant abstract. That is the problem, regardless of the reason.

For the purpose of those paragraphs, I pretended that the AAP’s claim that the US is neutral on infant circumcision isn’t laughable nonsense. On the basis of individual opinions, I think we’re probably the fifty-fifty nation they imagine. Institutionally, both medically andpolitically, we are very much a pro-circumcision nation. The Task Force stated a truth, while missing it, in its Technical Report:

… Reasonable people may disagree, however, as to what is in the best interest of any individual patient or how the potential medical benefits and potential medical harms of circumcision should be weighed against each other. …

The factually-unprovable statement in the Abstract that the “preventive health benefits of elective circumcision of male newborns outweigh the risks of the procedure” is the evidence that the AAP is not a pillar of neutrality on non-therapeutic male child circumcision. The Task Force thinks the subjectivity it mistakenly presents as a valid general conclusion in its Abstract may reasonably be taken into consideration for circumcising an individual by proxy consent. If they understood the ethical implications, they would acknowledge that it must only be taken into consideration by the individual for his own healthy body. The neutral position presents facts and lets the individual choose. The biased position lets someone else impose a permanent, unnecessary intervention for the individual.

The Task Force includes a section, Age at Circumcision, in which their argument is that many minors make their sexual debut before the age of majority and some of those people are irresponsible with regard to condoms. The Task Force argues these two facts render it acceptable for parents to make their son’s circumcision decision for him. It views parents through an ideal, rather than the reality of human decision-making where a child must live with the permanent consequences of an unnecessary decision. Individuals are just part of a statistic.

When the Task Force finally gets to the ethical issues, it whiffs again:

… The authors’ argument about the basic right to physical integrity is an important one, but it needs to be balanced by other considerations. The right to physical integrity is easier to defend in the context of a procedure that offers no potential benefit, but the assertion by Frisch et al of ‘no benefit’ is clearly contradicted by the published scientific peer-reviewed evidence. …

Because there are potential benefits, we may discard the supremacy of the basic human right to physical integrity for the healthy child? That’s ridiculous. They don’t say it directly, but their conclusion for parents making their son’s choice endorses it in reality. With this thinking, any number of extreme surgical interventions could be justified on a healthy child because they might offer some benefit at some point. We should at least research any possible intervention to make sure we’re not missing some benefit that could decrease some risk, if that really is an acceptable approach. Or we could be rational and set aside our long-held cultural acceptance of this unethical procedure, but that’s harder to defend than fear, I guess.

The second statement, the “assertion by Frisch et al of ‘no benefit'”, is not supported by my reading of their paper. They do not state there is ‘no benefit’ to circumcision. They question the strength of the benefits and their applicability to children, particularly because less intrusive methods to achieve these benefits are available. The Task Force builds a straw man instead of confronting the ethical issues.

Frisch et al appeal to the ethical precept “First, do no harm,” but they fail to recognize that in situations in which a preventive benefit exists, harm can also be done by failing to act. Whereas there are rare situations in which a male will be harmed by a circumcision procedure, …

I’m interrupting the excerpt to correct this inaccurate statement. Every circumcision inflicts harm, including loss of normal tissue and nerve endings, as well as scarring. Some circumcisions inflict more harm than expected or intended. The Task Force conflates intent and outcome.

… it is also true that some males will be harmed by not being circumcised. Simply because it is difficult to identify exactly which individuals have suffered a harm because they were not circumcised should not lead one to discount the very real harms that might befall some men by not being circumcised. …

I don’t discount the real harms some will experience from the risks in being alive with a normal human anatomy. I dismiss their relevance in this context. It’s a dumb standard for evaluating what may be done to a healthy child without his consent. Life can never be lived without risk. If a male is worried enough about the minimal risks posed by his foreskin, he can elect to be circumcised with his own informed consent. But the reverse is not true. A male who is circumcised at birth can’t recover his foreskin if he would not trade his foreskin¹ for the proposed benefits. Individual choice is the valid, superior ethical position.

Their conclusion:

… There is no easy answer to this issue ethically. Regardless of what decision is made on behalf of a young male, harm might [ed. note: will, if the decision is circumcision] result from that decision. That is precisely why the AAP task force members found that this decision properly remains with parents and that parents should have information about both potential benefits and potential harms as they make this decision for their child.

There is an easy answer to this issue ethically. Non-therapeutic genital cutting on a non-consenting male is unethical. It inflicts guaranteed harm to minimize already tiny risks. This is the same easy answer we draw for females. We know parents shouldn’t make this decision unless it is “necessary to the health of the person on whom it is performed” when the person on whom it is performed is female. We’ve legislated this knowledge. The right to physical integrity is easy to defend. The AAP has an ethical duty to defend it for all children, including males.

¹ Full quote from AAP Task Force on Circumcision member Dr. Douglas Diekema: “[Circumcision] does carry some risk and does involve the loss of the foreskin, which some men are angry about. But it does have medical benefit. Not everyone would trade that foreskin for that medical benefit.”

Inevitably, whenever a new study suggests that circumcision may not be a panacea of benefits without costs, dismissal follows swiftly. That isn’t the problem. Skepticism is always warranted, and sometimes, criticism is also warranted. I do wish more people, particularly journalists, would adhere to that when pro-circumcision studies are published, but c’est la vie. The facts are on our side in this (unfortunately) long effort. The key is getting to facts.

With the recent study confirming “the importance of the foreskin for penile sensitivity, overall sexual satisfaction, and penile functioning”, the refutations have begun. When Dr. Douglas Diekema criticizes, odd bouts of cognitive dissonance are almost guaranteed. Here, Dr. Diekema joins the rebuttal¹ to this study with his unique way of missing a much-needed chance for self-examination.

“The study is pretty flawed,” said Douglas Diekema, a pediatrics professor at the University of Washington, who was part of the American Academy of Pediatrics 2012 task force on circumcision. “I read the conclusion and then I read the study, and I said, ‘Wow, they went overboard in what they’re concluding.'”

If only Dr. Diekema, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Task Force on Circumcision, always cared about having the details match the conclusion, with not going overboard in a conclusion. For example, in the AAP’s revised policy statement on circumcision, the technical report states (page 759):

… Reasonable people may disagree, however, as to what is in the best interest of any individual patient or how the potential medical benefits and potential medical harms of circumcision should be weighed against each other. …

That’s the core truth for any non-therapeutic intervention, which clarifies the ethical flaw in proxy consent for non-therapeutic circumcision. What does the individual who doesn’t need circumcision want for himself?

Yet, in the abstract for its revised policy, the AAP bizarrely concludes:

Evaluation of current evidence indicates that the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks; …

The statements in the technical report and the abstract do not say the same thing. The details do not support the conclusion. The abstract states an opinion that the technical report makes clear is not universally true or applicable to any specific individual male. Dr. Diekema once stated (correctly) that “not everyone would trade that foreskin for that medical benefit.” Yet, he stands behind the revised policy that encourages proxy consent for non-therapeutic circumcision while maligns those who criticize the report for its obvious flaws. He’s made these contradictory statements for more than a year. At some point maybe he’ll stop doing that, or he could even embrace the ethics involved that require rejecting non-therapeutic genital cutting on a non-consenting child. I can hope.

¹ The study may be flawed, and perhaps in exactly the way Dr. Diekema states. I don’t wish to engage in confirmation bias merely because I like the findings. Anyway, I don’t need the study. The principled ethics matter more than whether circumcision is “good” or “bad”, both subjective to the individual foreskin owner.